A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Ralph Koster.

I’ve recently had the pleasure of reading ‘A Theory of Fun’ by Ralph Koster. This book explores the very essence of what fun is all about. Every page of text is accompanied by an entertaining cartoon. And the topics explored in the book are on such diverse subjects as Psycology, Game Theory, Pattern recognition, Flow, Music, Personality types, Emergence and Evolution. How and why those topics are important to games, gamers and game designers is covered.

A short synopsis on Ralph’s book would go something like this.

Games are essentially about learning a particular rule set, and it is this exploration of the rules that we find fun. If the game is too easy, then it is boring for us, and we seek a different game. (Think of the last time you actually enjoyed playing tic-tac-toe) And if it is too hard, then we don’t have that much fun either, rather we just get fustrated and grumpy and call the game derogatory names.

The fun we experience when playing a game is all about learning the game at a pace that we find acceptable. The corollary of this is that every game is destined to become boring once we have mastered it. This is an interesting notion for Game Designers, because it means that one of the objectives to keep in mind when designing a game should be to delay for as long as possible complete mastery.

But you can’t do this just by making it hard. Because no one will play it. One must offer many variations on a common theme. The games that have been with us for a long time - Chess and Solitare for example, do this kind of thing.

Who would have actually thought that learning was fun?

Ralph’s book is highly enjoyable, interesting and I recommend every game designer gets a copy for their bookshelf.